Former Bosnian Serb General Hears Indictment, and Insults, as Trial Opens

THE HAGUE — Of all the men associated with the cruelties of the Bosnian war, none has been more roundly condemned by public opinion than Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander who ran a deadly military campaign in the 1990s, of a kind not seen in Europe since World War II.

On Wednesday, Mr. Mladic finally faced his judges as his trial opened at a United Nations tribunal here.

Sitting upright between two guards, Mr. Mladic, 70, looked more frail and aged than the burly soldier he once was, a power-strutting commander who inspired deep terror among Bosnian Muslims and Croats and great admiration in Serbia.

In the 12 months since he was brought to the court in The Hague, after hiding from it for 17 years under the protection of friends, he has not spoken of the past, let alone the 100,000 who died in Bosnia, except to ask for his military uniform. He has mostly complained about his age and ailments.

But on this day, as a prosecutor, Dermot Groome, presented his narrative of the war and what he described as Mr. Mladic’s leading role, Mr. Mladic seemed revived, even animated, by film shown in the court, scenes from the time he kept the city of Sarajevo under siege for 44 months of shelling and sniping at civilians. And he nodded approvingly as rousing political speeches from 1992 were replayed, calling on Bosnian Serbs to rally for war against perceived Muslim and Croatian enemies.

The court heard the prosecutor’s dry and methodical recitation of how, in ethnically mixed Bosnia, Serbian politicians and military leaders carefully planned a campaign of ethnic cleansing, attacking and terrorizing non-Serbian civilians to clear out whole regions and turn them into lands only for Serbs. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed or fled their homes. The campaign to divide Sarajevo, which the prosecutor said was “once a model of ethnic diversity,” left more than 10,000 people dead. He played the sounds of what he called radio intercepts in which Mr. Mladic was heard personally directing fire against civilian targets in Sarajevo’s Old Town.

At the height of the Bosnian operation, forces under Mr. Mladic’s command controlled nearly three-quarters of the territory.

In the crowded public gallery, a group of Bosnian survivors murmured insults as Mr. Mladic turned to scan the crowd, with one woman shouting “Vulture!” as Mr. Mladic gave a thumbs-up sign when he spotted an acquaintance. Another woman raised her hands, crossed over as if in handcuffs, to remind him that he was now a prisoner. He responded by running his hand across his throat, a gesture that led the chief judge to call him to order and tell him to stop “inappropriate interactions.”

During a break, Kada Hotic, who had traveled from Srebrenica, had lost her breath in anger. “He ordered the killing of my husband, my son, my two brothers and my brother-in-law,” she said. “Now that I look him in the face, I am so disturbed, I want revenge.”

In another courtroom not far away, Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia who was found guilty last month of war crimes and crimes against humanity for aiding rebels in Sierra Leone, said during a sentencing hearing that he sympathized with victims of the civil war in Sierra Leone. While he did not express remorse or acknowledge wrongdoing, he asked the judges to decide his sentence in a spirit of “reconciliation, not retribution,” The Associated Press reported. He is to be sentenced on May 30.

Mr. Mladic, who was arrested in a Serbian village in May 2011, faces charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and two counts of genocide — one for the ethnic cleansing campaign and a second for a massacre during the war’s climax, when Mr. Mladic’s forces overran a small contingent of United Nations peacekeepers in Srebrenica. About 8,000 unarmed men and boys were killed over several days in July 1995 in what were portrayed as acts of vengeance for Serbian deaths at the hands of Muslims.

Photo

Ratko Mladic, right, the former Bosnian Serb military commander, at the start of his trial at The Hague on Wednesday.Credit
Pool photo by Toussaint Kluiters

“By the time Mladic and his troops murdered thousands in Srebrenica,” Mr. Groome said, “they were well rehearsed in the craft of murder.”

Bodies from the Srebrenica massacre are still being found in mass graves. Ewa Tabeau, a demographer called to testify at the tribunal, said this month that 8,005 had been killed there, of whom 6,241 have been identified by DNA analysis. “The prosecution will present evidence that will show beyond a reasonable doubt the hand of Mr. Mladic in each of these crimes,” Mr. Groome said.

The prosecutor described how Bosnian Serbs had used strategies of ethnic cleansing to redraw the demographic outline of areas they targeted to ensure “the separation of the Serbian people from the other two national communities” — Bosnian Muslims and Croats. “Ethnic cleansing was the purpose of military action” rather than a consequence of war, he said.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Mr. Mladic has refused to enter a formal plea, but has said that he is not guilty of wrongdoing because his mission was “to defend Serbs.” The court entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf on Wednesday. He is the last of the major figures in the Balkan wars to face trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia here.

Mr. Mladic has been in poor health, the result of two strokes, although his health has been improving, his lawyer, Branko Lukic, said. “The prosecution has a strong case, but we will fight it,” Mr. Lukic said after the session.

At the start of the session, Mr. Mladic greeted a man in the gallery; he nodded and smiled, and the man responded in kind.

Was he connected to Mr. Mladic, a reporter asked the man, who identified himself as Satko Mujagic from Bosnia.

“Yes, I am connected to Mladic,” Mr. Mujagic replied, his voice rising in anger. “His army attacked my town, Kozarac, burned down my house, killed my grandmother, my cousins, my best friend, my schoolteachers. I spent 200 days in Omarska prison camp and was beaten until I could no longer walk. So I am connected to him.”

Why, then, did he smile and greet Mr. Mladic?

“Because I am so very happy that now he is there, in the dock,” Mr. Mujagic said.

Much of the evidence against Mr. Mladic has been amassed and tested in other trials, where defendants were accused of crimes that overlapped with the accusations against him. Four of his aides and senior officers are serving life sentences, and other subordinates have been given a range of prison sentences.

Prosecutors will also rely on satellite images and extensive film that put Mr. Mladic on the scene at the time of military action.

Another extraordinary source for prosecutors lies in material found hidden inside a wall of Mr. Mladic’s home in Belgrade. It includes recordings of Mr. Mladic speaking during meetings and by telephone, and his wartime diaries, or military logs, reporting on meetings and decisions, totaling almost 4,000 pages.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.

A version of this article appears in print on May 17, 2012, on Page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: Former Bosnian Serb General Hears Indictment, and Insults, as Trial Opens. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe